Essentially the Nokia E63 is a cheaper version of the popular Nokia E71 business smartphone. It doesn’t have HSDPA-connectivity or a built-in GPS, but in terms of design looks much like the Nokia E71, with the full QWERTY keyboard included. Good value for money, the only factor you’ll have to consider is going without really quick mobile Internet.
The E63 is not as powerful or slim-line as the E71, but considering it’s very cheap and designed much like the Nokia E71, it is a great deal. However, consider there’s no built-in GPS or HSDPA connectivity when weighing up your options.
As far as design goes, the E61 is thicker than the E71 and made of plastic instead of metal. It won’t feel as tough, but on the plus side, you won’t have to deal with fingerprint smudges.
The full QWERTY keyboard is good for typing, but some people mightn’t like the spongy keys, which are squished together a bit too closely. One potential issue you’ll have to think about is that the first and last columns of keys are extremely close to the phone’s edges. This phone’s space bar is smaller when compared to the Nokia E71, which could also be frustrating for those of us with larger fingers.
Imported from the E71 are numerous shortcut keys including: home, calendar, contacts and mail, as well as selection buttons and a five-way navigational pad. However, the side of the phone does not have volume controls or any other buttons.
Screen display is a little bit smaller on the Nokia E63, but it keeps the same resolution and performance rate as the E71. It is not the best around, but you can view the screen from most angles and in direct sunlight.
Running the popular Symbian S60 platform, the Nokia E63 has plenty of business features such as the ability to read and edit Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents, as well as accessing PDF files. The Nokia E63 is FAST.
Applications open and close instantly, and even when running multiple programs you won’t feel any perceptible lag. This is a real plus. The menu interface doesn’t look as great as some of its counterpart smartphones, but you do have the option of downloading numerous new Symbian themes.
To offer a much cheaper phone than the E71, Nokia left out the built-in GPS and HSDPA connectivity. Being without GPS is fine, but HSDPA connectivity in a business device is a real must, so this has to be deemed as a loss.
The E63 is 3G-capable, but its maximum data transfer speed isn’t very quick. Big mobile Web users will feel the slow down in pace. Gratefully, the phone does have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth with A2DP.
Besides personal e-mail accounts like Gmail and Yahoo! Mail, the Nokia E63 works together with the Microsoft Exchange Server. Setting up an e-mail account is very simple. After you enter your name and password the phone automatically searches for all the necessary settings. Even though there’s no built-in GPS, the Nokia Maps application is available.
The Nokia E71’s very practical switch mode hasn’t been left out of the E63, so you can easily swap between business and personal modes whilst editing settings like enabled applications, notifications and themes. You’re able to toggle between the two modes, so cool tricks like blocking access to your work e-mail and tools when in the personal mode are fun options.
The Nokia E63 is a practical multimedia smartphone, and is the first Nokia E-series handset to have a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. Video looks pretty good on the E63’s screen, but it’s not big enough to watch for extended periods of time. Although the camera has been downgraded to 2 megapixels and only has fixed focus settings, it has got LED flash and a self-portrait mirror. The E63’s camera flash also doubles as a torch, which is turned on when you press down on the space bar.
Pros:
• Phone and keyboard are well-designed
• Cool switch mode option
• Wi-Fi ability
• User interface is great
• Very good value for the price
Cons:
• There is no HSDPA-connectivity
• GPS is not included
• Space bar is smaller than on the E71
• Camera is of lower quality than the E71